Hall wins offroad racing championship
Nick Hall is the 2025 CT Civil New Zealand offroad racing champion.
He took the title over two days of racing at the Waikato cluib's TECT Park track. It's the second time he has won the title, the first being in 2017, and he is one of only two 2WD/4WD truck racers to have won the title in its 42-year history.
It was anyone’s title to grab after series points leader and defending champion Carl Ruiterman withdrew in the week before the race. He’d had surgery and was recovering, but then a fall put him on crutches, unable to race. Disappointment. Having dominated the regional rounds he’d raced, Carl was in line to score a very historic ‘four-peat’, having won three titles in a row from 2022-2024.
Ruiterman can score his fourth national title in a row. If he can do it, he’ll be the first ever to win four titles in a row. He had won every time he raced to amass 216 points and lead the championship. It was no easy run either. A total of 16 S class cars contested the championship this year.
His absence threw the title fight wide open. Among those in contention were Cam Paton, Neil Coutts, Nick Hall and Daynom ‘Slim’ Templeman.
The latter was driving his unlimited class two-seater V8 car with which he had won the Woodhill 100 in June.
“It started off pretty good with us taking first in the first heat race and leading the second, until Kong stopped coming up to the last lap- it took us the rest of the day to find the problem, which turned out to be a broken wire to the crank angle sensor.”
With that repaired he was able to start the second day’s enduro, but had dropped well down the points table.
In the unlimited truck class, the big Pro4 V8 trucks of Richard Crabb and Gary Baker were wheel to wheel on the first day, but neither was in line for championship points. Driving his Toyota Chev Prolite, Nick Hall was in line to win the title, and never let the two big trucks out of his sight. He took a strong in-class points balance into the second day of racing.
With leading racers striking trouble in the short course heats on Saturday, the second day’s 150km forest enduro would decide the outright title.
Daynom Templeman had pole courtesy of setting the fastest lap time of the short course racing.
The 50-strong field got cleanly away into the forest, but a crash on the first lap forced a full restart. Fergus Crabb had flipped Big Trouble in a narrow uphill section of the track, forcing the stoppage. The car climbed a bank on the outside of a gentle turn, then went up and over, finishing up sideways on its roof.
The field returned to the start-finish area and restarted in single file - the restart was without incident, but then on lap five Daynom Templeman’s mighty Kong was out, opening up the battle as Cam Paton consolidated a lead. Neil Coutts was in the hunt, and Dyson Delahunty was hovering in the top five, looking to challenge the front-runners.
Dyson Delahunty took the lead and won, heading home a full podium of UTVs with Cam Paton second and Noah Hutchison third.
The top six finishers all completed 18 laps. Eleventh place and the unlimited truck class win was good enough to give Nick Hall the national title – his second such overall win. It’s the third time a truck-class competitor has won the title, the other being back a few years when my son Owen took my previous truck to the title.
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